The Staff of the Winds (The Wizard of South Corner Book 1) (13 page)

Kadeen calmed himself as the slave scurried back into the room with his tea.  It would not be wise to let one such as she see him in a state of agitation.  Kadeen had long since had her tongue removed, but Adham al Dharr could easily be using her as an informant nonetheless.  Centuries of caution in the palace of the Baraduhne had kept Kadeen alive and close to the pinnacle of power. He would not be caught out now, not when his greatest opportunity to achieve the status he deserved was drawing ever closer.

“Summon Commander al Bardon,” Kadeen commanded, and the slave scurried away.

Commander Furstiv al Bardon was a large man with a huge barrel chest and biceps that strained against his formal uniform blouse. He wore a gray patch over his left eye, a dark scar ran out from under it and down his left cheek. A departing gift from his predecessor on the occasion when Furstiv had replaced him, the scar had tightened that side of his face when it healed causing the left side of his mouth to turn up slightly in a permanent sneer. He was lightly armed while in the palace, wearing a short sword at his left hip and a long curving knife on his right. Of course he carried other weapons as well, but these were the only ones visible.

“You sent for me, my lord,” he said in a low but booming voice, and inclined his head slightly.

“Leave us,” Kadeen commanded the slave.

Turning to al Bardon, Kadeen said in a lowered voice: “Our time approaches. I have learned that an apprentice to that old fool Gilladhe is among those being brought to us. They should be approaching Carraghlaoch by now. I want you to meet them there and make sure that our orders have been followed precisely. The apprentice is a young man, and poorly trained; he will be no threat once he is secured in the warded dungeons of Carraghlaoch. Separate out all young men from the prisoners and secure them there. Make sure that the rest are kept alive, we’ll let al Dharr search through them at his leisure,” he added with a sneer. “Most important, secure the staff. The books can wait; I’ll claim them later.

“Oh, and Commander, warn our men to be wary of birds of prey. This apprentice may be able to use them to his advantage.”

“As you command, my lord.” Raising his right fist to his chest, al Bardon bowed and left.

While Marian kept watch at the edge of the trees, Owen and Jack buried the body of the woman they had found in the watchtower deep in the woods near where they had camped. When they were done, they scattered leaves and brush over the grave and swept around it so that it would not be found by the gorn. They then gathered their packs and the horses and joined Marian.

“Any sign?” asked Jack.

“No, everything is quiet.”

“Before we start out,” Owen said somewhat hesitantly, looking out over the hills to the west, “there is something that we have to talk about. I already know where we’re headed and what we will see when we get there.”

“What are you talking about?” Marian asked.

“Last night, when that gorn surprised you on watch, you were saved by an owl.”

“Well, yeah, there was an owl. It scared the crap out me with its screeching. It was all over the place, diving at the gorn. It really tore him up good, but I would have spotted him myself… Wait a minute, how do you know? You slept through the whole thing.”

Owen turned and looked his sister in the eyes. “I was that owl. At least I was in that owl, or my mind was, or something. I don’t know exactly, but I was there.”

“What are you talking about?” Jack asked.

Owen reached in his pocket and pulled out the headpiece to the Old Wizard’s staff and showed it to his friends. “When we were in the village, I took a look in the Old Wizard’s cottage. It looked like his staff had exploded and killed him. As I was leaving I noticed this on the floor. I picked it up and put it in my pocket, thinking to give it to dad, but I forgot about it when he told us to track the raiding party.

“The first night out, when I went to sleep, I dreamed that I was flying. At least I thought it was a dream. Anyway, I followed the trail we’ve been on and I saw the enemy campsite. The villagers were all tied up in the middle of the camp, with about 20 soldiers and maybe twice that many gorn camped around them. I flew around it a couple of times, then flew further up the trail until I got to this tower. I was perched on that point right up there, when a gorn threw a rock at me. That is when I woke up back in our camp. I pulled this out of my pocket, and the eyes were glowing.”

“So you knew this tower was here before we ever got to it,” Marian said. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“I didn’t believe it,” Owen answered. “At least I didn’t want to believe it. It isn’t natural. And besides, I wasn’t sure it was real until we got our first look at the tower from that rise back there. I still didn’t want it to be real, but it happened to me again last night.”

“You mean you dreamed yourself into that owl just in time to scare the crap out of me and save us all?” Marian asked with just a touch of sarcasm. “Pretty good timing, I’d say.”

“Well that isn’t quite what happened,” Owen said, and he told them the whole story including the castle of Carraghlaoch, the bridge across the Wizard’s Moat, the sorcerer on the other side, and the monster in the water.

“Jeez, Owen,” Jack said when he was done. “We can head back and report right now. You’ve done the whole job already.”

“Not quite,” Owen answered.  “We still don’t really know where they are taking the villagers.  I mean that bridge is really narrow.  They can’t be planning to just herd them all across.  It would take a good part of a day to get everyone over, and they’d probably lose half of them in the water.  I still don’t have any idea why they took them, but I think they may be planning to hold them in the old castle. We need to be sure before we go back to report to our fathers.”

“That should be no problem, big brother” Marian interjected.  “We can just camp right here and you can fly up there tonight and see what they’re up to.”

“I don’t think that it’s that simple,” Owen answered. “Last night, when I was coming back from the Moat, I was starting to worry about how to get out of the owl and back to being myself. On the first night, it happened all by itself when I was attacked, but the second night I was attacked twice and I was still in the owl. I didn’t get out until Jack shook me awake after you two killed the gorn. I’m afraid that if I do it again, I might not be able to get back at all. One thing I am sure of is that I don’t know how this is happening or how to control it, and that scares me.”

“Sounds easy to me,” Marian remarked. “You said you came out no problem the first night. Just give the headpiece to one of us tonight. It’ll be our first time, and you should be able to wake us up easily when we come back from scouting around.

“Here, let me see it,” she said holding out her hand.

Reluctantly, Owen handed the headpiece to his sister. Something about letting go of it didn’t feel right, but after all, it wasn’t really his to begin with. He’d just picked it up by chance off the Old Wizard’s floor.

“Ow!  Damn!  You could have warned me that it was hot!” Marian exclaimed as she dropped the brass falcon’s head to the forest floor shaking and blowing on her fingers.  “How were you able to hold it without getting burned?  I’m already starting to raise a blister.”

“It’s just a lump of brass, Marian. It’s not hot,” Owen answered and stooped to retrieve it.

“Wait,” Jack said, putting a hand to Owen’s arm. “Let me pick it up.”

Cautiously, Jack squatted down before the headpiece, stared at it for a time, then slowly lowered his hand to grasp it.  Before he touched it, he just as slowly drew his hand back again.  “I’m not sure if it’s heat exactly, but it definitely hurts if I put my hand too close to that thing.  And, it may be my imagination, but those eyes seem to be staring at me and they don’t look at all friendly.  You better take it back, Owen.”

Mystified, Owen carefully reached for the headpiece. It didn’t feel warm to him, no warmer at least than a piece of brass should feel after lying in the sun for a few moments. He looked at the eyes, and they appeared very intense, like the eyes of a falcon should, but not overly menacing.

“That settles it,” Jack said.  “You’re the only one who seems to be able to handle that thing. It’s not going to let us use it, so we’re back to where we started.”

“I think you’d better ditch it somewhere,” Marian interjected.  “I mean if it’s messing with your mind, and you can’t either control it or predict what it’s going to do with you, it’s too dangerous to just keep around.”

“Marian’s probably right,” Jack agreed. “Granted, your experiences with it have been really helpful so far, but you were amazingly hard to rouse this last time. If it’s affect on you is getting stronger each time you use it, we may not be able to bring you back at all next time. To be on the safe side, you should probably just leave it behind. We could bury it here and mark the spot so that nobody else finds it, but where it could be reclaimed if someone sometime has a need of it.”

Owen looked down at the headpiece—it seemed to be staring back at him—and after a pause, he thrust it back into his pocket. “I’ll have to think about it. I can’t explain it, but it somehow doesn’t feel right to me to discard it yet.”

Jack and Marian looked at each other and frowned, then Jack said, “Okay, so what do we do next?”

“Well as I said,” Owen answered, “I’m afraid to try using it again tonight. Who knows, there might not even be an owl around and we will have wasted the rest of today and tonight. I think we should continue on as we have been. Only this time let’s swing a little wide and approach the castle from the north. I think they may be stopping there, and I don’t think that it’s safe to just come strolling in on them up their back trail. Sooner or later, they’re likely to send someone back to this tower and I’d like to be a good distance away from it when that happens.”

Marian and Jack agreed, and they led their horses back through the woods to exit at the northwest corner. Jack did what he could to disguise their trail as they went through the trees so that the gorn would have a tougher time tracking them.

After Kadeen’s evening meal, Yeva provided a short status briefing to Dagan, who would take over her watch until morning then went to the Guild’s exercise room to work out the knots built up standing guard in Kadeen’s quarters.  While many of the sorcerer’s guards and servants were young, pretty and female during the day, at night, he almost exclusively employed males for those duties. Kadeen liked to take pleasure from his female possessions at night, and he did not want it to interfere with either his level of protection or the efficiency of his service staff. When he had first purchased Yeva, she had often been included in his evening entertainments, but the little cruelties that he enjoyed had had little affect on her, and despite her beauty he had quickly become bored with her company.

Like Yeva, Dagan was also a ranking member of the Guild. Eleven years Yeva’s senior, he had been one of her instructors when she was just a young girl. The authority of trainer had brought out a sadistic streak in Dagan, and he often abused his position with his younger charges. Little Yeva had found herself naked over his knee for a session with the rod or strap many times for some real or invented misstep.

Yeva had grown to thrive on the discipline of the guild, and generally accepted her punishments without complaint—in truth, she held herself to higher standards than did her teachers—but on one occasion at the age of ten, Dagan had gone too far and while in the usual punishment position she drove her right thumb hard into a principle nerve junction in Dagan’s left thigh. This small act of rebellion had nearly cost her life that day, and Dagan’s punishments had become more inventive and more humiliating thereafter, but Yeva had always considered it worth the cost to see her tormentor walk with a pronounced limp for nearly a week.  Their relationship now was one of cool and professional reserve.

In the gymnasium, Yeva climbed a rope using only her upper body, back straight, legs straight, jackknifed at the waist and began her regimen of one hand pull-ups from a bar suspended near the high vaulted ceiling. Once warmed up, she proceeded with a series of gymnastic swings, flips and leaps working her way across the room, high above the marble floor, using various rods, ropes and sway bars positioned for the purpose.